Cyther

Cyther is a human-playable robotic zither. By integrating robotic actuation into a human-playable instrument, agency becomes amorphous and distributed as performer and machine interact through a shared medium. A human performer and the machine are able to fluidly move between the roles of impulse and filter. v1 and v2 were designed and built in 2015. The development of v3, which adds self-tuning mechanisms to the instrument, began in 2016.